IATI Consultations Archive

Redefine activity-website as a document-link

In the review of the language neutral approach, the original proposal overlooked the activity-website element. While some multi-lingual publishers may well deploy a single u.r.l. that allows the user's browser to render the data in different languages, others may have multiple pages which need describing separately. Given that a web page dedicated to an activity is indeed a document (in html format) we believe that adding "Activity Web Page", in addition to organisation, sector and country web pages as document-categories is the more efficient approach.

We therefore propose to remove the activity-website element and to add organisation, sector, country and activity web pages as document categories.

For technical details about implementing this proposal go to: https://github.com/IATI/IATI-Schemas/issues/118

2 Comments

We interpreted "activity website" a little differently, as referring to a website where the implementing partner may be providing additional details on the activity. We publish the implementing partner's website URL in this element.

While I understand the logic that an activity web page is a document, linking to the implementing partner's website also offers value (if only a somewhat lesser risk of having broken, out-of-date links). Perhaps the new document category could be created, and the current element renamed e.g. Implementing Organisation website (with the possibility to specify the language of the website)?

In other instances, publishers use this field to point to a page of their own, but I can see how you could utilise this for external sites/pages.

The structural issue with the activity-website element is that a) there is no language support and b) the URL is not an attribute (as it is in document-link - which may mean an overhead for data users).

If we focussed on addition document category codes, then this could also be progressed in 1.05. Perhaps then 2.01 can cover guidance and whether the actual activity-website element is to continue